Argh! Too hard! Great game though…
Around 1987, Nintendo created several arcade games that each featured a slightly different Nintendo game. Some of the popular games at the time received this treatment. One of them, conveniently enough, was Castlevania.
STORY: Castlevania puts you in the role of the vampire hunter, Simon Belmont. As Simon, you have to navigate through six levels of various monsters to rid the land of the evil Count Dracula. Back in the day the game was made, the story was nothing more than an after-thought. It holds true for Castlevania, but it sounds cool. You’re not saving some princess or getting eight pieces of triangle. It’s just a simple romp through a castle to kill a vampire lord. How much more simpler do you want it to be? 9/10
GRAPHICS: The 8-bit graphics are great for the time. There is some attention to detail (as much as possible in those days) and the Simon movement is somewhat fluid. The arcade makes use of a different palette with brighter and crisper colors, so that it looks almost different from the NES version. The fact that they made use of better colors gives it a perfect score. 10/10
SOUND: The sound effect for the leather whip snap is actually pretty good, even though they couldn’t come up with a chain whip snap sound. Explosions are pretty nice to hear, and the rest is a mixed bag. The soundtrack is actually pretty good and at times, themes are pretty catchy. 9/10
GAMEPLAY: Say what you will about the rather primitive control scheme as compared to a more modern Castlevania game such as Dracula X or Symphony of the Night, it’s perfect. So what if you can’t jump off stairs or if you can’t whip in 500 different directions? That’s why it’s called a challenge. There is the problem with trying throw a special weapon on stairs, but other than that, it’s just fine.
Back in the old days, we didn’t have to go through nine million rooms just to fight a big bat. We went through three areas to fight one. Simple design that stands the test of time. 10/10
CHALLENGE: Castlevania is a pretty difficult game in itself, but Vs. Castlevania is even harder as it decides to put you in ”hard” mode; it takes about three or four hits to kill you in this game. This makes an already difficult game even more tougher than before. Still, if you could beat the original NES game in hard mode, you shouldn’t have much of a problem here. 10/10
REPLAY VALUE: It’s one of those games you would play again and again for no reason whatsoever, despite its insane difficulty. Then again, maybe not. 8/10
OVERALL: The difficulty of the game is the only factor keeping me from giving Vs. Castlevania a perfect score, but other than that, it is an excellent NES arcade game. Recommended. 9/10
dtm666 